Witness tried to save #SadiaSukhraj

Durban - Sadia Sukhraj’s leg was trapped under the front passenger seat of her father’s hijacked car, the Durban High Court heard on Wednesday.

Witness Naresh Singh described how he freed her leg in an attempt to rush the shot child to hospital.

Singh was testifying in the trial of Seni Mkhize, 35, who is charged with the murders of Sadia and his alleged accomplice, Siyabonga Bulose.

He has pleaded not guilty to all the charges against him.

Mkhize and Bulose are alleged to have been armed when they accosted the 9-year-old girl and hijacked her father, Pastor Shailendra Sukhraj.

Bulose was killed as the duo attempted to flee from the scene.

Singh, who works on the road where Sukhraj’s car came to a halt after the hijacking, said he had stopped to help at what appeared to be the scene of an accident or hijacking. He said he found a man lying on the ground by the front passenger door.

“He was sitting against the door, gasping for air. I went around the car and saw an Indian guy trying to take out a child from the back. He asked for help because the child’s leg was jammed behind the car seat,” he said.

Singh said he went to the front passenger door, which had no window, and reached in to pull the seat forward, freeing Sadia.

“I took the child to the last car at the road entrance as there was now a line of cars on the road. She was not moving.

"She had blood on her left side,” he said.

He went across to a red Toyota Tazz and asked the driver to rush her to hospital.

“There was a lady there. She was terrified and she was screaming for us to help her child.

"I’m not sure if she was the child’s mother, but she left with the child in the Tazz,” he said.

Security guard Siyanda Thabethe told the court a suspect in the passenger seat told him they had not shot the child.

“I asked him why they had shot the child and he said it was the owner of the car who shot the child,” he said, adding the man had identified himself as “Dumisani” from Dassenhoek. “He asked that I call an ambulance for him, but I told him we were waiting for police.

Then a convoy of cars approached and a large group of people got out of the cars, carrying weapons,” said Thabethe.

He said he had seen the Hyundai Tucson speeding, with its back right passenger door open and which hit a truck as it drove past. He said the Hyundai returned and knocked him over on to an embankment. As he approached the car, he noticed the driver fidgeting inside.

“He got out the car carrying a black handbag, using the open-back passenger door, and ran down the embankment to the park.” .

Thabethe said an off-duty policeman had apprehended the driver, who the State says is Mkhize.